Registration ends 07.4.2026 at 23:59 h

This seminar introduces students to the field of environmental humanities, which questions and overcomes the separation between the humanities and natural sciences, i.e. the claimed dichotomy between culture and nature. Here, environmental humanities open up the possibility of broadening perspectives to include feminist, anti-colonial and more-than-human approaches.

This theory-based and equally applied, practical seminar includes a critical reading of seminal literature texts (which themselves are oriented at the interface between philosophy, social and environmental sciences, but also the arts and literature studies) and an introduction to a broad and creative variety of methodologies as well as their implementation in specific case studies within and beyond the natural landscape of the city of Lüneburg.

In keeping with the innovative character and experimental orientation of environmental humanities, whose ‘learning beyond the classroom’ approach emphasises both a public-facing and a committed, action-based and reflective academic practice, this seminar intends to reshape learning. This require students to explore their ideas and approaches in real-world contexts that challenge and extend coventional disciplinary thinking. Issues like global environmental histories, colonialism, climate change, biodiversity loss, and waste are seen through the forms they take in particular communities and places. Hence, we discuss and develop concrete case studies in our immediate environment in small groups and leave the campus to experience them "in the field". This also means that, after intensive preparatory work at the beginning of the semester, students independently develop a thematic and guided tour for their fellow students throughout the semester, which is then conducted in plenary at the end of the lecture period. In line with current research, this not only allows theory and methodology to be better internalised through practical and interdisciplinary research practice, but the increased self-awareness of students in the field also offers a new way of thinking about human-nature relationships on the one hand and the role of academic work and situated knowledges in this on the other.

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